Archive for the ‘Cushman Collection’ tag

Mazda has always been an automaker associated with racing and motorsports, from the early days of the rotary engine RX models through today’s Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup series. In the mid-1980s, Mazda even tried its hand at Group A rallying, but to do so it needed to build 5,000 road-going versions of its prospective rally car.

Thus, the Mazda 323 GTX was born. The all-wheel drive hot hatchback debuted in Europe and Japan in 1986, but didn’t arrive on these shores until two years later, in 1988. Though the car’s aggressive looks, performance, handling and all-wheel drive sounded like a recipe for sales success, not many prospective buyers could justify its $13,000 point of entry. In two years, Mazda sold just 1,243 examples on these shores, ultimately leading to the car’s cancellation after the 1989 model year.

During its two-year run here, the 323 GTX gave U.S. buyers a turbocharged, intercooled 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine, rated at 132 horsepower and mated to a five-speed manual transmission. Power was sent to all four wheels via a planetary differential that could be locked by the driver, via a dash-mounted switch, for added traction on loose surfaces. The net result was a 0-60 MPH time of around eight seconds, despite the car’s 2,645 pound curb weight.

The 323 GTX was far more than a Mazda 323 with a turbocharged engine and all-wheel drive, however. Compared to its more pedestrian sibling, the GTX was wider in track, featured a redesigned underbody, and boasted reinforced side sills for added platform rigidity.

Inside, the driver and front seat passenger enjoyed firmly bolstered sport seats, though the rest of the cabin was typical economy car fare. Buyers could opt for digital instrumentation as an option, but most cars were delivered with conventional analog gauges to keep pricing down.

Owners praised the 323 GTX for its nimble handling and tenacious grip on a wide variety of surfaces, as well as for its easily upgradeable power output. Adding a cold air intake, aftermarket exhaust system and a boost controller could bump output by some 50 horsepower, delivering truly impressive performance for the day.

Because most examples were tuned for higher output and then driven hard by enthusiastic owners, finding a serviceable 323 GTX today may prove challenging. Rust can be an issue, as many cars were sold in snow-belt states and used as all weather daily drivers. Transmissions are said to be fragile, but particularly so on cars that were tuned to make significantly more horsepower. Repair parts are getting harder to find as well, which can be expected on a 24-year-old car with limited original distribution.

The U.K. equivalent: Mazda’s 323 Turbo 4×4

Mazda originally planned on selling some 2,400 323 GTX models in the United States, but its steep price (roughly 30 percent more than a Volkswagen GTI, which delivered comparable acceleration in stock form) and limited marketing undoubtedly hurt sales. Ironically, the demise of the 323 GTX didn’t discourage other Japanese automakers from launching compact turbocharged all-wheel drive sports cars on these shores, including the Isuzu Impulse XS (sold in 1991 only) and the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX (which, like its Eagle Talon TSi sibling, was built by Diamond Star Motors in Normal, Illinois).

It’s probably fair to say that the Mazda 323 GTX helped pave the way for today’s compact all-wheel drive performance cars, such as the Subaru WRX STI and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. Though the 323 GTX may be gone, its spirit lives on beneath the skin of more modern hardware.

As for the location, Cushman noted it was on Phillips Avenue, and we believe it to be between 8th and 9th streets, which means that pretty much all of the buildings in the shot have since been razed and replaced with a big ugly Wells Fargo building and parking structure. Hooray for progress.

That said, tell us what you see in the shot. And can any Sioux Falls residents explain the banners – local high schools?

We’re going to circle back around to the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection for today’s street scenes. First, we selected the one from Marlborough for frequent commenter John from Staffs, a Brit who’s frequently at a disadvantage when it comes to carspotting U.S.-based street scenes.

While John’s working out the cars in the Marlborough shot, let’s see how many of the vehicles the rest of you can identify in the above shot that Cushman took in 1952 in San Francisco (at a location some of you film buffs should recognize).

This appears to be orderly, well-behaved parking outside a Roman post office. Clearly, there is something wrong here. Something very, very wrong here. Was May 22, 1960, when Cushman took “Post office,” some sort of holiday? Is this a War of the Worlds scenario?

Charles Cushman made a number of trips to Europe and the Middle East in the early and mid-Sixties. As usual, he was concerned with architecture and the human landscape, and in Europe, it looks as though that meant he was interested in the integration of the automobile into the urban environment. He visited Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands and the United Kingdom; coming from California it must have been mindboggling.

“Watzmann in distance” comes from May 25, 1964, and is exemplary of his late period. The slightly skewed composition reflects der savagely jagged Watzmann, and subtly underscores the fact he took the photo from the Berchtesgaden side. It was quite clearly a conscious decision to include the parking lot full of cars in the lee of the great massif.

It sure looks as though Cushman actually took this one from the drivers’ seat of a car. He took “Across Union Square from Geary & Stockton’s” in San Francisco on June 16th, 1954. According to our model year economic theory, the city’s doing all right.

San Francisco is the most enduring theme in all Charles Cushman’s work, clearly his true love.

The Cushmanmobile Mk. II makes its first appearance in the second week of June, 1940, in a series taken in L.A. Cushman seems mighty pleased with it, and features it by itself in a number of similar slides, such as “New Zephyr in Elysian Park, L.A.,” taken on June 14.

He was clearly a dedicated FoMoCo man, and it was a long time before he got tired of taking pictures of it. We sure hope 54 P 934 didn’t get scrapped.

It’s the same today–the farther you get from the centers of industry and employment, the older the cars get. Tucson, Arizona, was so far off the beaten path in 1940, it might as well have been 10 years earlier.

Cushman took “Indian Grandma + little papoose” on a Saturday afternoon in February, in what was probably downtown Tucson. There probably aren’t many people around today who remember those days, but if you can help identify the spot–or recognize your grandmother–let us know.